"Hoo?" the owl screeched, digging talons into the padding on his arm. "Where is this?"
"Are you Chabi or Sorghaghtani?"
"Who? Do I look like Sorghaghtani? Do I sound like Chabi? What part of the spirit world is this?"
"No part, so far as I know. I call it the Unplace." He had settled on this as the least distracting dreamscape for his ghostly excursions — not properly demon rides, because Smeòrach was not demonized. Smeòrach was probably not necessary at all, but he was company, and his presence reassured the people Toby journeyed to meet in the real world. Better a demonized horse than a demonized commander.
He patted Smeòrach's neck. "Faster, lad, faster!" Their speed had nothing to do with him, of course, but the big oaf didn't understand Gaelic anyway. He seemed to enjoy the exercise on the endless flat surface.
"How can you stand it without a drum?" asked the owl-shaman. "How long must we stay?"
"I never know." Even the hob could not move him instantaneously. "I only hope I haven't left it too late."
Busily using claws and beak, she worked her way up his arm to his shoulder. "What went wrong, Little One?"
"I blundered. I think I was just too tired." He had ridden round to all the Allied camps the previous night, returning to Florence just before dawn to do a day's work before he went off to attend Lisa's wedding. As always he had closed off what he thought of as his hob memories, so that he would not need to tell lies to anyone, but in his haste and weariness he must have barred the door too well. He had failed to remember his other existence when he needed to.
Chabi turned her head around, scanning the Unplace. Sometimes she seemed to make complete revolutions with her neck, but that couldn't be right. "How long have you been coming here?"
"You are Sorghie, aren't you?"
"Who? Why don't you answer my question?"
"Who asks? Since just after Trent. In the middle of the battle, Nevil sent demons after me, and I fought them off. Not only demons, though — a couple of arrows seemed to veer away from me, and once I was charging straight at a cannon and their match went out when they tried to fire it. Later, when I had time to think, I decided I'd been using the hob's powers, but the hob hadn't gone on a rampage. Neither of us has gone insane since, so far as I can tell. The Fillan hob and I are pretty much one and the same now."
"Did you not tell us that you feared you would turn into a demon incarnate if that happened?" The familiar sounded annoyed, although Sorghie must have realized she was dealing with two separate Tobys, and the daytime version did not know the moonlight version existed.
"I do. It's my worst nightmare, but if this will help overthrow Nevil, I am willing to take the risk. I try not to use gramarye except when I must." He sighed. "Sometimes it just happens, like a blink happens if something comes too close to your eyes." Or like repelling Lucrezia's advances by dropping a statue across her path, or putting Hamish to sleep so he wouldn't notice the midnight comings and goings.
Smeòrach was flagging, and Toby resisted the urge to drive the big fellow faster. They would arrive when they arrived. Sometimes a jaunt from Florence to Fiesole took longer than a trek to Naples or Milan or Venice. The first time he had ventured on a nightmare ride like this had been his journey to Rome for the secret audience with Ricciardo Cardinal Marradi.
"In this horrible place, why are you laughing, Little One?"
"Who are you calling a Little One, chicken? I was remembering that fight I had with a squirrel in your spirit world, Sorghie dear. I just realized what memory you almost awoke."
His Eminence had stipulated that the meeting be held at Tivoli, in the hills east of the Eternal City, where he had a summer villa, but this was not summer, and Toby emerged from the Unplace into a chilly drizzle. He had not thought to bring a cloak. Obviously he had much to learn about his new abilities.
The Magnificent had given him directions beginning at the bridge, meaning he must first find the bridge in pitch-darkness without falling into the gorge. Just how he managed that he could not have explained, nor even how he followed the trail once he had located it, but eventually he rode up to the gates bearing the Marradi arms. He was well aware that he was mud-spattered and soaked, reeking of wet horse and wet man, and he towered four or five hands taller than the wizened old doorkeeper who answered his knock, but this ancient showed no sign of surprise or alarm at the mysterious night visitor. Having admitted him in complete silence and barred the door again, he took up his lantern and led the way through a building that seemed much more a mansion than a villa. The wan light flickered on marble and gilt, hinting at riches crouching in the shadows. By the time he was ushered into the great man's presence, Toby had almost stopped dripping a muddy trail for the servants to clean up.
The cardinal had obviously been napping over a book in a comfortable chair. He roused himself and strutted forward like a robin, offering his ring to be kissed, but holding it low enough to leave no doubt that Toby was expected to kneel first. So he knelt and was left shivering on his knees on a very cold marble floor while his host wandered back to stand in front of the hearth. The doorkeeper, having added a few more logs to the fire, had withdrawn, still silent, and no one had mentioned warm spiced wine. No one had said anything about hospitality for Smeòrach, either, but of course he was assumed to be demonized.
"State your case," the cardinal said. "You are wasting our time unless you have something new to say."
The noble acolyte was small, pudgy, and chinless in his grandiose red robes; and for his manners he deserved to be kicked very hard from Sicily to the Alps.
"I have defeated the Fiend in battle, Your Eminence. That is new. No other man can say as much."
The cardinal shrugged. "You bested one of his underlings, not Nevil himself. You did so by using gramarye, which decent men do not touch. Last week your arch-hexer died a deservedly horrible death in Siena, so now you come crawling to the… no?"
"With respect, Your Eminence, Baron Oreste remains in excellent health."
The little man scowled. "Carry on, then."
After that cool beginning, the audience waxed even frostier. His Eminence conceded that the College might possess a few immured demons that had not yet been destroyed, but not that it kept any great horde of them in the crypts of Rome. Even if some could be found and their names determined, the Holy Father was adamant that the College could never allow them to be used, nay not even to defend Italy from the Fiend. That would be a great evil.
Oreste believed that the College used its vast cache of confiscated demons to defend Rome itself. That, he had said, was why the cardinal had insisted on meeting Toby at Tivoli, because any attempt to ride a demonized horse closer to the city would be very quickly fatal. He also suspected that the present Holy Father was senile and the College was badly divided on the question of how far it could bend its principles in order to resist the Fiend.
"If the gramarye were to be strictly limited to defense?" Toby asked. His knees ached, and the cold of his wet tunic had soaked through to his bones.
The cardinal sniffed. "And what is defense, pray? A bowman shoots at you so you wipe out an entire army and call it defense? I see no point in continuing this conversation."
"I am trying to save your native city from total destruction, Your Eminence."
"It sounds to me as if you are exposing it to totally unnecessary risk. I can't imagine why my brother would waste a moment contemplating the wild plot you suggest. The Holy Father would be incensed if he heard that I was even discussing the use of gramarye. It is an evil that has perverted many fine adepts into hexers and so damned them."
"With respect, Your Eminence, the baron believes that he can find volunteers to handle the demons according to his instructions. They would not be jeopardizing their souls with forbidden knowledge."